Mohamed Nur, 26, was stopped at Heathrow airport in June after returning from a holiday in Dubai. He was held for nine hours and forced to give DNA samples and fingerprints. During the questioning, one of the police officers asked about his British credentials. "He asked me 'Do you consider yourself to be English?' I said I consider myself to be British, rather than just English," Mr Nur said.

"He said 'How do you consider yourself to be British when you have no historical links with Britain? It's like me going to Somalia and living there and people still not considering me to be Somali because of the way I look.'

"I said 'I've lived most of my life in Britain so that's why I'm British'. Then he asked me about Dad's Army, and whether I watched it or not. I said 'Yes'. He said 'Do you find it funny?' and I said 'Yes'. Then he said 'I consider you British'."

I find myself torn by profiling at airports. On the one hand it makes sense to target those whose background makes them most likely to pose a threat, but equally, any sort of unsusbstantiated and obviously bias racial profiling is an unjustifiable intrusion on privacy and freedom.

I recommend reading the entire Independentarticle, it poses a number of very serious questions on liberty and how far border control is going to stop anyone from 'slipping through the net'.